National Sorority Colonization Process?
 

Hey y'all,
I'm an officer of a local sorority at the small liberal arts college. We have 6 national fraternities and 3 local sororities. We were just informed that SAE is looking to recolonize on our campus, and so our Greek Life director has told the sororities that if they're interesting in going national she'd encourage and support us.
Has anyone ever gone through/have experience in this process? I know my org looked into it before I joined and decided it would too expensive, but now we would have the school's support so that isn't really an issue anymore
Also, does anyone have any insight as to how this process works/what we do first?
Thanks,
Meaghan

Here is information on NPC extenion:

http://www.npcwomen.org/extension-info.aspx

Even if you have the school's support, it doesn't mean they'll pay your colonization fees. Those come from the colony's membership. I highly doubt your Greek life director could get away with that item on the budget.

Thanks so much for your help! That makes everything alot clearer.
I didn't know that's what the financial part entailed. We were simply informed at meeting by the one sister still here who looked into it before that it would be "really expensive" and then our Greek Council rep said the school would help out. Are we responsible for paying for the visits of the NPC groups are interested? That could have been what she meant.

No. Each NPC group has a budget for expansion that includes traveling to schools to present. You guys would not have to pay for that. She may have meant that your dues would go up from what it is as a local. As a member of a NPC, you have local and (inter)national dues that go towards supporting the larger organization. Many times, local organizations get away with much lower dues since they don't have to funnel money back to the mothership so to say. They also don't have the benefits of that mothership. Hope that helps.

Yes, this is where to start. I was part of a chapter colonization and it is a rare and rewarding experience. Good luck!

They may "help out" as in setting up meetings, reserving spaces for presentations, maybe feeding the presenters from the national sororities, but I can't imagine they would do any more than that. They would have a very difficult time explaining to alums/parents/higher up administrators why they were paying for something that affected such a small fraction of the student body and brought in no discernible profit (like sports).

klk112 at Carnegie Mellon
Paula M in the 60s

These two stories chronicle locals at schools where the rest of the chapters are already National. However, there are cases where all the locals at a school affiliate with an NPC at the same time. Recently (2009 I think?), Sacred Heart did this, and glittergal1985 is a Theta Phi Alpha alumna who was a senior when her chapter was installed.

Also, Sewanee (University of the South) has one NPC, one local that is seeking NPC affiliation (Kappa Omega), and 7 locals. Perhaps you could get in touch with Kappa Omega about their experiences.

Pepperdine's locals went NPC in the late 90s and I believe PeppyGPhiB was part of the founding class, not sure if she was part of the local though.

Wake Forest's locals went NPC sometime in the 80s.

carnation may also be able to provide some insight on Shorter College and the cross over from local to Inter/National groups.

I actually went through this same situation with my local sorority back in 2008. At first we were very hesitant about going national, but that was due to us having about a million misconceptions about what going national would actually entail (expense was one of them.) The University (Sacred Heart) informed the NPC that we were open for expansion and invited six different NPC groups to come make expansions presentations to the five locals interested in going national. The locals did not pay for anything at this point and we were not obligated to join an NPC just for attending the presentations (one local changed their minds and only four of us actually affiliated with NPCs.) PM me if you want to know more :)

As a woman who has loved meeting members from all over the US (I met one this week in Dubai!) I think having the opportunity to become part of a national organization is something you should really consider. It's sort of like you join a local for 4 years and then you have a whole different, vastly larger group for the rest of your life. And it really is special. Good luck, and go A Xi D!;)

Thank for all your help, y'all! We've only talked about it briefly thus far and have a few other things to handle first before we get to this, but we're having a retreat this weekend, so I'll let you know if I have any more questions!